


But If You Call

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Empires
Genre: M/M, voice restriction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:53:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom is good at taking care of Sean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But If You Call

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "silence" prompt at kink_bingo.

The trailer is Tom's undisputed domain, his little kingdom on wheels. It's not much of a kingdom, but he's not much of a king.

He wipes down the amps for the third time and shoves his handkerchief back in his pocket, then stacks the amps neatly in their place. They have a long drive from here to the next town, but if he gets everything perfectly in its place, nothing will shift and bang around. It'll all be smooth sailing.

He turns around to pick up the next amp and finds Sean standing there holding it out to him. It probably scares ten years off his life.

"What are you doing here?" he asks when he can breathe again. "Jesus."

"I'm giving you a hand." Sean steps past him to put the amp with the others. It's supposed to go on top, but he sets it down on the floor beside the stack. "You looked like you needed one."

"Who's at the merch table?" Tom stares at the misplaced amp and wonders if Sean will be hurt if he moves it. It's not going to ruin anything sitting on the floor. It just doesn't _go_ there.

"Mike and Julio."

Tom picks up his pedal board. "The fans don't want to talk to Mike and Julio." They should; Mike and Julio are hilarious and really good guys. Tom accepted a long time ago that he doesn't think like most people, including people who are fans of things. 

"I know." Sean shrugs, his face reddening a little behind his beard and the fading tan from their summer run. "It's just, my throat's a little scratchy."

Tom stops and puts the board down. "Your throat?"

"Yeah."

"Do you need some Vitamin C?"

"Nah."

"Do you need echinacea?"

"No, Tommy. Just let me hang out back here with you, huh?" Sean picks up a case and Tom bites down on his tongue to keep from telling him to leave it alone, that goes in _last_. It won't hurt anything.

"You need some hot tea with honey."

Sean laughs and shakes his head, giving Tom a look that doesn't make any sense. "No, dude. I need Tom time."

"What?" Tom frowns at him and takes the case away. "Tom time? What?"

"I feel like we never hang out anymore."

"We live in a van together, Sean."

Sean sighs and his shoulders slump. Tom stares at the line of sweat soaking through his shirt down the center of his back. "Yeah. Okay. Forget it."

"No, I'm not, like..." He's not rejecting Sean or something. He can use the extra hands, since Max has fucked off somewhere with his phone. "Tom time. Tom and Sean time. Yeah. Hand me that case."

Sean drags it up the ramp to him. "Did you see the kid in the back dancing to Hell's Heroes? He was killing it. Fucking awesome."

"Ha. Yeah, I saw him. He was really into it." He was also staring at Sean like Sean hung the moon and stars. He's probably standing at the merch table right now, hoping Sean will come back. Somebody is being an asshole in this situation, and Tom doesn't know if it's him or Sean. Or if it matters. 

"Maybe we could make the guitar break longer." Sean grins at him and grabs his shoulder. "Give you a solo."

Tom rolls his eyes but smiles back. "No, and also no, but thanks anyway." 

"Let them love you like I love you, Tommy."

Tom never knows what to do with that, with Sean's exuberant love or the way it sends heat darting up and down his spine. "How about you let me lock up the trailer, instead, and we'll go round up the guys."

**

The guys have actually left the venue and gone to a bar up the street, which, it would've been nice to get a text about that or something, Tom thinks, but what does he know. Sean sticks close to his side, bumping him with his hip and his shoulder and talking, talking. It's just stream-of-consciousness nervous energy, nothing important, but it's driving Tom a little bit around the bend and he can hear the rasp in Sean's voice getting worse and worse.

"Sean," he says finally, after they get past the guy at the door and into the bar. "Dude. Stop talking."

Sean breaks off mid-sentence about the door guy's tattoos. "What?"

"Your throat, man. You're wearing it out. You need some tea or something."

"I need a beer."

"No." Tom shakes his head and looks around the room. Max is at the far end of the bar with Mike, both of them on their phones. Julio is nowhere to be seen. "Look, just, like... go sit over there. Grab that table in the back, see it? Back there. And don't talk to anybody."

Sean laughs and stares at him. "What?"

"You start talking, you won't stop til you can't talk at all. Go sit and wait for me."

Sean laughs and crosses the room, veering over to ruffle Max's hair and slap Mike on the shoulder before he goes to the empty table. Tom orders a beer and a hot tea with honey, which makes the bartender roll his eyes, but whatever. Fuck that guy. He sends Danielle a quick text while he waits, tapping his foot to the bar's canned classic rock. This is a good night, he thinks vaguely, though he couldn't tell anyone what in particular makes it good if they asked. Just... everything. 

Danielle sends back sleepy xo's and says she's still at work, pulling an all-nighter, so he closes his phone and puts it back in his pocket. They'll talk sometime tomorrow.

Sean grins at him when he sits down, taking the tea and drinking slowly, his eyes closed. Tom sips his beer and pictures the honey coating Sean's throat, smoothing over the rough and sore places. Sean had really poured it all out onstage tonight, and it's toward the tail end of tour. He needs to go easy on himself, and if he won't do it voluntarily, the rest of them just need to make sure it happens anyway.

"We should change up the set list tomorrow, maybe," he says, rolling his drink back and forth to watch the foam coat the glass. "Maybe swap out Shame for Hard Times." Sean doesn't answer. Tom frowns at the foam and takes another sip. "Or whatever. Maybe add Runaway? I don't know, I just feel like we're not clicking on Shame." Still no answer. "Dude, whatever, you want to keep Shame, we can--" 

A napkin bumps against his hand. He blinks at it; it's got Sean's crazy-ass handwriting scrawled across it. _Dude you told me not to talk! Can't answer!_

Tom looks up. Sean's grinning at him like this is the greatest joke in the world. "You're seriously not going to talk?" Sean gives him a thumbs-up. "How long is this going to go on for?"

Sean takes the napkin back and scribbles at the bottom. _Until you say I can._

"This is for real?"

Sean rolls his eyes and flips the napkin over to write more. _100% Also let's swap Shame for I Want Blood._

Tom takes another drink. "Veto." He looks over at the bar just as Julio reappears from wherever he'd gone. "Finish your tea and we should get rolling. It's a long way to Iowa."

**

The guys don't seem to notice how quiet Sean is as they get settled in the van and hit the road. Tom and Sean sit in the back, Sean's head resting on a box of t-shirts and Tom's feet on the back of the middle seat, next to Max's head. Mike and Julio have the wheel and the iPod. Tom has two hours of juice in his laptop battery and two dozen pictures to edit, save, and never show anyone. It's a setup for a good drive. 

Sean's face looks like some kind of ancient art in the glow of the laptop. Ancient art filtered through technology. Tom works his phone out of his pocket and snaps a quick shot, saving it instead of putting it out there for the Internet. The light turns Sean's stubble and the lines under his eyes into chiselled stone weathered by sun and rain. There's no Instagram filter for that.

Tom dozes off not long after his laptop battery gives out. When he wakes up again, the van is parked at a rest stop and the sun is peeking over the edge of the trees. His phone says it's just after six AM, and all of the other guys are asleep. Mike's laid the driver's seat flat back onto the middle bench seat beside Max, which has led to a tangled situation where he and Max are half-spooned up to each other. Tom takes a picture and posts it. Some things the Internet just needs to know.

He climbs carefully over Sean's legs, executes a double-hop with a half-twist to clear Julio's backpack, and let himself out of the van. He hears stirring and grumbling behind him at the sound of the door opening, but he doesn't look back. He grabs his camera bag from under the passenger seat and walks away across the rest stop, leaving the door open behind him.

He snaps a few shots of the parking lot, deserted except for their van. There's a hawk settled in a pine tree outside the little building housing the bathrooms, and he takes some shot of it, too, wrinkling his nose against the evergreen smell and cranking his neck back as far as he can to get an angle that shows the bird stark against the sky. It glares down at him, then spreads its wings and takes off. He doesn't bother trying to catch it in flight, just lets the camera settle on its strap around his neck and walks down the little path leading away from the highway and into the woods. 

It's quiet, this early in the morning, blessedly quiet. He makes his living off of noise, but he lives in the silent spaces between it, just him and his thoughts, what he thinks and what he sees. And his cigarettes. He lights one now and walks along, pausing to take halfhearted, half-composed pictures of the slowly rising light reaching through the trees. None of them are going to be perfect.

He leans against a tree and closes his eyes, drawing smoke deep into his lungs and letting it go. This is the life. This, exactly. 

The sound of footsteps on the path makes his eyes snap open. He straightens up, curling his cigarette into his palm and rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth. He opens his mouth to call out, to ask who's there, then swallows the sound as he sees Sean making his way along like a clumsy puppy, his t-shirt hitched up so he can scratch his belly, his hair all a mess, his shoes untied. He sees Tom and grins, giving a little wave and then a thumbs-up. He doesn't say anything.

Tom smiles and drops his cigarette to the ground, grinding it out carefully under his heel before he steps toward Sean. _Only I can prevent forest fires_ , he thinks, and _only Sean can smile like that at six AM_ , and _only we would be out here, together, totally not watching the sun rise._

They're listening to it, kind of. The birds waking up with soft calls and chatter around them. But that's less important to either of them than just standing under the trees together, smiling and not talking, having Sean-and-Tom time.

Tom takes pictures of Sean standing under the trees, holding his hands up to the morning light. He takes one of Sean reaching out toward him, then has to drop his camera to his chest as Sean grabs him by the wrist and pulls him close, everything still in silence.

Sean even stays quiet while they kiss, quiet enough that Tom can hear their hearts pounding.

**

Julio curses them out when they make their way back to the van, but he's laughing while he does it. "Where did you two go? We thought you got eaten by wolves or something."

"There aren't wolves around here," Tom mutters, giving Sean a hand up into the van. 

"Sure there are."

"There are not."

"I'm gonna Google it. Get in the van, motherfucker, we've got ground to cover."

Tom flips him off and climbs into the back seat again. Sean's digging around in his duffel bag for something, the expression on his face intent enough that Tom waits to see what it's going to be. 

When Sean's notebook emerges, they grin at each other again, and Tom reaches across the space between them to punch Sean in the thigh. "No songs about me," he whispers. Sean rolls his eyes and drops the notebook to his lap, then holds up his hands in a W. _Whatever, Conrad._

It's probably for the best that Tom's laptop battery is dead. Otherwise he would spend the rest of this drive turning the pictures of Sean from all the wild too-much color of the woods into honest, sharp black and white. Laying all of their secrets out.

Instead, he takes the book he's reading from his bag and rests his head against the window, letting the sound of Max and Julio singing along with the iPod carry him on to Iowa.

Somewhere around the state line he leans over Sean's arm and whispers in his ear, "You can talk now. If you want to."

Sean takes Tom's hand and presses Tom's fingers over his lips. His other hand writes, _That's okay. I'm yours until showtime._


End file.
